


Tabula Rasa - Of Bats and Birds

by NoEden



Series: Tabula Rasa [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Brother/Brother Incest, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Christmas, Christmas Angst, Christmas Fluff, Fatherhood, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28028502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoEden/pseuds/NoEden
Summary: Bruce handles the affairs of the house for the holidays and comes to terms with just how much he’s missed over the years. Jason allows himself to be invited to a gathering with a family he doesn’t consider himself part of. Everyone needs a hug and they get them.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: Tabula Rasa [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2175273
Comments: 19
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jei_Stark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jei_Stark/gifts).



> This work takes place after the City of Bane event. In addition there may be other spoilers contained within, as the author utilizes a blended canon although the main focus is DC Rebirth. Overall this fic is intended to be relatively short and is safe for general consumption but is marked for swears and implied sexuality. This is my first fic in who knows how long so enjoy, and please feel free to comment.

_ A list of duties carried out for the holidays by one Alfred Pennyworth (deceased). _

  * _Ensure the manor is decorated to specification. Contact the following for lights, tree, and various small decor. The tip for the gardener is approximately forty percent of the final invoice. Perhaps reindeer this year._



[ Enclosed, a list of phone numbers and requests, most of which boil down to ‘the usual’ and indicate many of the time slots have already been booked.]

  * _Invitations. Include a return envelope for Christmas lists and RSVP._


  * Plan dinner. Perhaps a place for Miss Kyle this year. Master Jason unlikely to attend, despite Master Dick’s best efforts. Master Tim might be busy with…



The first list fills precisely two and a quarter pages in a small black book maintained by the former butler, in a distinguished hand meant only to ever be read by one person and yet assuredly legible for others. As of now, December Twelfth, the book has been opened by one Bruce Wayne by the request of a precisely worded will that asked that all duties should be carried out as normal by Alfred’s successor. Lacking a successor, whomever wished to take on the duties listed within could do so, but it was his foremost wish that at the very least Christmas should remain unmarred by grief and instead include a celebration of his life and the lives of those he loved most.

Many birthdays and other smaller affairs had carried on in silence. Thanksgiving had come to nothing aside from a brief well-wishing and the manor had remained largely empty aside from a single visit from each of the former Robins, with one notable (or perhaps not notable because of just how expected it was), exception.

_...a list of accommodations for one Jason Todd. Or rather, notations of what had been attempted over the years and what he had enjoyed. Though Jason was acrimonious by nature it wasn’t as if all he ever lived were fury and misery even if he attempted to espouse such. Every year the answer to the RSVP was marked ‘unable to attend’ and his list had been returned empty aside from a singular desire to be left alone, if he bothered to answer at all (although to his credit there was only one year to which he did not respond). That was the only gift he had ever asked for. _

  * _Included Master Jason in cookie decorating. Although he did not put in much effort in the actual decoration, at least he enjoyed a fair number._


  * Included Master Jason in cookie decorating. Of note, he seemed to particularly enjoy the following recipe common to middle-class households with its cornflake crust. Also of note this is not a type of cookie that needs to be decorated so perhaps that lends to the enthusiasm.


  * Included Master Jason in cookie decorating. Sent him home with a pan of Magic Cookies for him to consume at his leisure. It seemed he actually enjoyed decorating this year, although that might be because he spent most of the time painting all the bats with red frowning faces. Master Richard’s presence seemed to help, but he does seem to keep the family in good spirits in general.

* * *

  * Invited Master Jason to select the tree for the manor as well as one for his own domicile. While he rejected the offer for a smaller tree he did at least seem to enjoy the process of selecting a gorgeously large fir. I suspect because it gave him license to complain about no less than half a dozen other trees.


  * Invited Master Jason to select the tree for the manor as well as one for his own domicile. He even stuck around to assist in decorating, although he made his excuses to depart when Master Bruce returned.


  * Invited Master Jason to select the tree for the manor as well as one for himself and Master Richard. Although initially reluctant, Master Richard’s encouragement resulted in the purchase of a smaller tree that Master Jason stated would be ‘stuck on the table or whatever’ to keep it from shedding needles throughout the new building.

* * *



  * Invited Master Jason to a smaller dinner with just the other children. Declined.


  * Invited Master Jason to a smaller dinner with just the other children. Declined.


  * Invited Master Jason to a smaller dinner with just the other children. Initially declined. Master Richard then proceeded to bring him as a personal guest. Hopefully this behavior continues.

* * *



  * Took Masters Jason, Tim, and Dick to a local Christmas market. He seemed to enjoy himself. The others brought plus ones, although he hardly appeared to be put out by this. Perhaps smaller group affairs are an idea to apply in the future.

* * *



  * Master Jason has accepted my request to join him on visitation to his mother’s grave. He seems to appreciate the company.

* * *



  * Requested Master Jason’s accompaniment shopping for the others in order to get an idea of what to get him for Christmas. It was nice to have an extra pair of hands for the bags, although he did point out rather sullenly that it might be easier to order gifts online instead…



...The list goes on and on so much longer than Bruce could ever think it to, largely because he hadn’t actually expected such a list to exist at all. There were other records as well because Alfred was nothing if not thorough and attentive. While these longer lists were compiled neatly on a personal computer, there were still a fair number of the small black books to record information on the fly. There was no reason at all for these records  **not** to exist, it just didn’t occur to him, and this was a thought that niggled at the back of his mind for reasons unknown. He wouldn’t think of it until after hours of poring through the relevant details just what the trouble was.

There was years worth of information. Decades even, some of which only encompassed his own preferences and inclinations. There was a notable gap between when Jason had been presumed deceased and when the entries resumed, but resumed they had, and with little delay once the former ward had revealed himself as living. There was just  **so much** written, so much time that he hadn’t accounted for in all his time away and with his teeth bared at the boy who had come back a man.

There was so much he had  _ missed _ .

There was guilt there too. Guilt that he couldn’t imagine Jason doing any of these things, that he could hardly imagine the young man as anything but the boy he had been and the red mask and bulletproof armor he was now. Assuredly there was someone underneath the mask as was the case for himself but that face had been so thoroughly denied him outside of a few moments and even those dripped with enmity. The Red Hood he knew was not the one who carried bags for Alfred or decorated cookies. The Jason Todd he knew was a boy in green and yellow, one far too reckless, not the one who begrudgingly allowed himself to be brought to breakfast at the heels of Dick Grayson as they avoided touching too much in the image of teenagers trying to put on a face for their parents that said they hadn’t been kissing not moments before.

It was simply that he had to resign himself to the knowledge that he did not know Jason Todd and in fact, knew so very little of what happened under his own roof that not only did his butler see but had planned for and accommodated.

_ ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ _ , he could hear in primly accented tones.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t care for the man nor that they were always completely at odds. It seemed to be in their nature to conflict but there had been a few occasions in which there had come a peace of sorts and he could almost see the fragments of what had been. No capes. No guises. Only himself and Jason and the hood of a car and burgers in hand. That was part of the problem, wasn’t it? That he only saw the fragments and the fragments did not encompass the whole and his responses had been equally fractured. A moment, an embrace when the world was darkest, didn’t make up for all the shadows he hadn’t chased away. Some of the things that Jason asked of him he was incapable of giving but that didn’t mean…

...what did it mean?

The word ‘fatherhood’ was not one that applied to Batman nor to Bruce Wayne in the public consciousness. One a lone figure, the other a billionaire playboy not known to settle down. Despite his wards over the years one could hardly be inclined to call him a ‘Dad’ or a ‘Father’ when the word Guardian still existed. That didn’t mean he was lacking in the inclination. He wasn’t. Or he didn’t think he was, because he knew he loved each and every one of them and yet now, looking at these pages he could begin to understand just how that knowledge only burned in his core and didn’t reflect itself in the eyes of those around him. Affection had never come easy and it always seemed that there was never enough time or circumstance to express it and it had come to the point where he anticipated the rejection even before he tried.

Sometimes he wondered how Dick managed, but the eldest Robin had always been physically affectionate and flippant. It was the kind of demeanor that at first had seemed to grate on Jason at a minimum and make him actively hostile at worst but over time it had culminated in what they had become. Some part of Bruce took no small amount of credit for having insisted that Nightwing keep an eye on the Red Hood, try and get close, hold down tabs on the fort as it were. On the other hand he wondered if they might have turned out this way regardless and if the forced proximity had only accelerated what was already there. It wasn’t his business regardless, although this birthed a small idea.

“No way,” came the laughter from the other end of the line.

“Why?” Precisely measured, but calm and curious.

“Because,” Dick said, and the clink of a spoon and the muffling of words suggested a bowl of cereal at hand. Bruce could imagine him gesturing with the utensil on the other end of the line as he spoke. “if I tell you anything, he’ll know it came from me. You’ll miss out on the valuable Good Dad points. Get him what you think he’d like best. I don’t think you have to do the whole Christmas deal, just...you know.”

Good Dad Points? Was that what this was about? It could probably be condensed to something so simple. Not that he’d phrase it that way. If Bruce were to appropriately define it he might have philosophized on the idea of making up for lost time and a lack of paternal intimacy, and promptly filed it away in an encrypted drive.

“Bruce?”

“Thanks.”

He hung up on a sentence garbled through a cheekful of peanut butter puffs.

_ ‘Just...you know.’  _ You know how to do this.

You don’t have to be Alfred. It doesn’t have to be the perfect Christmas with all the bells and whistles and everyone crammed onto an opulent couch for crisply wrapped presents and the smell of a four course feast wafting from another room.

You just have to  _ try _ .

Bruce dials the first number on the first list without a scheduled time block yet and closes his eyes as it rings.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jason assumes and only kind of makes an ass of u and me.

“Jason Peter Todd.”

Coming from Dick it just sounds ludicrous because he says it with the same bright cheery sunshine as his quips and jokes but the divot between his brows and the matte red rectangle he holds aloft suggest otherwise. It’s serious, even if he puts on that pleasant smile as he wags the envelope in place.

“You’re not even going to open it?”

“Why were you digging in the trash?”

The smile threatens to dip at a corner. A matching envelope dangles from the opposing hand, torn wide with enthusiasm, green and white peeking from the tattered remains.

“It was sitting on top. Jaybird-“

“I’m only invited because you are.”

“That’s not fair.”

Jason slowly withdraws his outstretched legs from the low coffee table and pushes himself up from the clinging embrace of a leather couch perfectly worn into the shape of his slouch. A similar indentation occupies the cushion next to it, and a sliding divot between invites a body to nestle under his arm most days. The television remains an buzzing undercurrent of polished faces reading out the news from Gotham as he pads across the warehouse the pair of them call home to pluck the scarlet letter from Dick’s fingers. A weight settles on his shoulder in the form of an elbow and the rest of a cheek that squishes into his bicep as he peels a strip from the top rather than wrestle with the glue of the flap. Inside is a card. Rather generic. Like a drugstore find. It’s difficult to imagine Bruce Wayne zipping over to the corner store and bringing a box of these up to the counter, though that must have been the case unless he’d hired more help they had yet to hear of. It wouldn’t be out of the question to ask a housekeeper to do it, but that seemed unlikely for some reason. The embossed front rasps with the stroke of his fingers across it to flick it open and he notes with no small amount of irritation the glitter that clings to his hands and likely his t-shirt now, considering how Grayson’s slumped over his shoulder to read the text within.

“Dear Jason,” reads aloud, and a snort comes from his side as the syllables come in a dramatic growling imitation of their former mentor. Jason smiles in the quick twitch of one side of his mouth and continues. “You are cordially invited to the annual holiday festivities at Wayne Manor. We all feel the loss...of…”  _ We all feel the loss of Alfred, I know, but it was his wish that we don’t seclude ourselves in mourning at this time of the year. I know you must feel it particularly deeply. I hope you at least consider stopping by. I understand how you feel about me, but this isn’t for me. This is for the family and Alfred’s memory. If you do not respond or throw out this letter as I expect, I will take that the invitation has been declined. If you wish to attend please check ‘yes’ on the included card and indicate if you’d like to bring a plus one, and provide a list for—  _ “Fuck him. What does he know?” The card quivers in his fingers and sheds glitter on the wood in stark shimmering dapples before he flicks it back into the trash where it belongs. The red paper shreds thoroughly in his fingers, thin parchment fluttering down atop banana peels in curls, shiny green paper of the return-stamped envelope within joining the confetti. _ ‘Jay?’  _ “Guilt-tripping—“ Fingers close around his wrist as the last pieces flutter from his hands.

“Jaybird.”

Whenever he’d stopped reading aloud the other man had let him continue on his own and only when he had started working himself up did the gentle words come. Touch slides down tendons into the crease of a palm and there’s the sensation of his fingers parted by someone else’s. A scowl points down into colorful carnage as if he could set it on fire through sheer force of will. “I’m not going.”

“Okay.” Dick acquiesces. They both know it’s just for now while he’s still got that bitter taste in his mouth and there’s still a week and a half left for delicate nudging and cajoling but in this moment he’s permitted to be angry. It’s just one of the many things he likes about Grayson. It’s okay for him to be what he is. He doesn’t have to get over it now. They can talk about it later and they will, they’ll actually talk and work through it instead of sweeping it under the rug, instead of him getting chastised for his behavior and things getting smoothed over with the crack still underneath.

That there’s a green envelope on the counter already sealed and ready to be dropped into the mail slot doesn’t escape his notice, even as Dick slips an arm around his shoulder and turns him away from the scene of brief fury. The incorrigible man is already all smiles again, chattering softly as he dips to snag the remote and shut off a platinum blonde anchor mid-sentence about safety around the holidays. There’s talk of going out. A tree, maybe. They’ve got ornaments set aside from last year and the ceilings are so high that they can invest in a really big one and there’s railings to put lights through. They can make their own little holiday haven.

This too Jason knows is an olive branch extended. It’s an offer to make the warehouse a little more festive and a lot more like they can just have their own Christmas, but it’s also an attempt to placate him in order to nudge about a visit to the manor later. Just because he knows how it’s going to go doesn’t mean it isn’t going to work, of course.

“Sounds like a lot of work,” is not a no. 

Halfway up the steps he turns and snatches Dick around the waist to a peal of laughter and feigned complaint as he puts him over a shoulder like a sack of presents and ‘Ho Ho Ho’s his way to the top.

“Do I have to call you Santa?” comes from his back, delighted.

“Do that and I’m getting you coal.”

“Aww, you’re getting me something—“

It’s only later when they’re stirring from the haze of an impromptu nap with the fading afterimages of sunset filtering through the tall stretch of windows that the topic of Christmas is brought up again. Not the invitation, not exactly, but other plans. Which mostly amounts to Dick thwacking him in the chest and kissing him on the forehead and telling him that they’re getting a tree and he better come help or it’s going to be one of the ones that sheds everywhere. Jason doesn’t actually need the encouragement to get up and join him but as soon as they’re underway the roar of the motorcycle leaves him alone with his thoughts. Last time they’d gone to meet up with Alfred and occurred to him just how empty things had been these past few weeks. By now he would have been dragged on at least three different shopping trips and been politely bullied into kneading sugary dough to roll out and cut into shapes (a dog had been silently added to the pile of cutters last year, much to his stifled pleasure). Instead it had been just like any other day. Any other month. Only it had been hollow. Cold. Warm arms tighten around his waist through puffy sleeves and the thick leather of his jacket and his chest tightens with them. He fucking hates the holidays.

So why does he miss all the trappings of it?

The reality of it was that it was the only time of the year when he felt like he was part of the family in some abstract sense and now it was starting to kick in that the only person who really cemented him there was Alfred. Alfred, who kept his room exactly as it had been left when he was thirteen and understood what it had meant when he tore it apart. Alfred, who didn’t make him discuss anything he didn’t want to, and then made him want to pour it all out anyway. Alfred, who let him in every time Bruce was out and didn’t ask too many questions because he knew the answers anyway. Alfred, who had been more of a parent than the ones he had been birthed to and adopted by, and whose absence meant there was just one more place he was no longer welcome. Just because Bruce had sent an invitation by obligation didn’t mean his presence was desired at all, and the contents of the letter said as much in their condescension.

Dick knew what the contents of the card were supposed to mean partially because he understood the members of the family almost better than they knew themselves, and partially because Jason was generally inclined to read the worst in Bruce, most especially when the man tried to communicate and fell short with his analyticals as was the case here. Jason believed the passenger seat of the Batmobile was uncomfortable to keep people out of it. Bruce designed it for smaller Robins than the ones grown beyond the nest. They just kept missing each other by inches and neither knew how to bridge the gap and often were wrapped enough in their own hurt and egoism that they didn’t want to. It wasn’t up to Dick to explain it either; just because he could didn’t mean he should speak for Bruce’s intentions.

The best move now is the one he takes, and that is to let Jason stew in his own thoughts while he drives. He can tell the peaks and valleys of emotion in the thoughts that toss around his head by the way the bike speeds and slows, by how sharp the turns cut to replace fury with the pitched vertigo and adrenaline of whipping through the tiny perimeter of Blüdhaven where they lived across the water to Gotham where they grew up and knew like the backs of bloodied knuckles.

They didn’t talk about it then. They searched for trees and argued over how big it should be (Dick wanted huge and extravagant, Jay wanted to avoid the labor and cost of shipping, they compromised on ‘fine, we’ll get one that’s stupid big’ to Dick’s delight) and Jason vigorously shook each one as a matter of course, shrugging off the attendant’s dripping enthusiasm at the display of strength with a half-assed excuse about working out. They didn’t talk about it after, with legs buzzing and ears ringing from another brisk route through the city to the glitter of a street lined with shop windows. Hot chocolate warmed one of Jason’s stubbornly ungloved hands and the fuzzy hood of Dick’s jacket heated the other where his arm wound around lean shoulders in a manner that almost passed for casual while their legs moved in lockstep. Instead the conversation drove with the way Grayson turned it, mulling over gifts for Barb and Tim and graciously stepping over the landmine that was Damian even if he considered his desires anyway. Though Jason provided commentary he wasn’t all there, merely appreciating the white noise that someone else’s speech provided to mask his own internal processes. It was easier to focus on clear glass and beautiful decorations in the form of coats and purses, rings and necklaces. Easier to lose himself in a game shop’s careful posing of comic book statues and bright ads for sales. Dick tugged him into the shop beside it and left him by what he affectionately referred to as “the boyfriend couch”.

In fact it doesn’t come up again that day at all, not when they stop for food, not before they crash for sleep, not even on patrol. For patrol they go their separate ways. Separate lives. Separate minds. When they sleep, for the first time in a long time it’s not together and when Dick wakes up in the middle of the night he pads down the stairs to flick a blanket over Jay and is greeted with the narrowed Pit-tainted glow of a squint before the man rolls over and he excuses himself back up to the emptiness of a bed meant for two and a dog presently curled up on the rug downstairs.

When they finally talk it’s six days to the Eve and into the empty air on the condensing fog of Nightwing’s breath.

“Thought about what you’re going to bring?”

“What?” The Red Hood lifts his cloaked head for the faint fiery glimmer of masked eyes, the settle of his labored breathing roughened through the filtered muzzle. The scent of smoke still chokes the night air and they both reek of wildfire and accelerant. Suffice to say the first thing that comes to mind isn’t a gift for the host, but the patient silence in lieu of a response sets a lightbulb grimily flickering. “I didn’t even say I was going.”

“Didn’t have to.” The way Nightwing springs to his feet suggests he hasn’t spent the better part of the last three hours chasing down an arsonist while ‘Hood hauled bodies out of a building. It certainly doesn’t hint at him doubling back with the culprit over his shoulder to do the Fucking Most and lend a hand when the building crumpled. “I’m going and you’re coming with me, and you’re going to complain and probably sneak off to hole up with Tim, and you’ll have a great time until you’re not anymore and then we’ll leave.” Tightly costumed arms slide around hard armored shoulders and the Red Hood’s back warms with Nightwing’s weight. 

“Come on Little Wing. You know if he didn’t want you there you wouldn’t be.”

As always a heavy warmth poured through his chest at the nickname and a breath dragged in to loose on a sigh. “Wanting me to be there and not giving a shit if I show up aren’t the same thing, Dick.”

“Would you believe it anyway if I said he wanted you to come?”

The silence falls between them. White flakes settle on shoulders and hair and hooded head and neither moves to brush them away, whether they be snow or the remaining ash drifting on an icy breeze.

“Alright. Let’s get in before I freeze my nose off,” Dick says to break the silence and unwinds himself, stretching down a hand that’s clasped tightly in fingerless gloves and nearly pulls him off-balance when Jason rises. One heavy hand falls on Nightwing’s shoulder in two firm claps.

“I’ll see you at home,” is the murmur in his ear and the ceramic construct drops just long enough for cool, scarred lips to graze his cheekbone before it’s up again and he’s confronted with the visage of a disappearing red back vaulting over the ledge to hammer onto the fire escape below. For the first time in a long time he hears boots clanging on a metal stair and it’s not ascending to his Blüdhaven apartment. 

At night’s end he returns to a silent, darkened warehouse and a note by the door for an attempted package delivery. The only sign of Jay is his uniform shed from the door and trailing for the bathroom, the floor damp where he had stepped. On the kitchen island the mask rests like a detached crimson jaw of some dread creature and beside it, a box in silvered paper too crisply folded to be anything but the doing of a smiling seasonal shop attendant. A bottle in a green velvet bag reveals its contents through a snowflake-lace silver siding. The look of it says ‘expense’ and ‘gift’ but knowing Jay it’s probably nothing all that fancy. Even with all the wealth at his disposal he can rarely bring himself to spend it frivolously. That he had spent at all was enough and was confirmation of its own.

When Dick finishes his own shower he slides under sheets still damp and feels the immediate sluggish curl of arms around him. Fingertips cradle the point of his chin and caress down his throat and in that moment he holds his breath, waiting for it to be stolen by a hand that can’t discern friend from foe in the throes of darkened dreams. Instead an exhale leads to the loosening of muscle and a murmur of content and Dick is free to embrace the limbs wound around him.

And all is well.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'The Many Ways Jason Todd Sleeps (And Sometimes Doesn't Sleep At All)’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jack for the summary and for weighing in on Dick decisions. (Dickcisions(TM))

The first night alone is spent by his mother’s grave.

He wakes up beside Dick and leaves the bed with Dog hanging at his heels as he silently dresses. When he tries to leave her behind there’s the beginning gurgle of a protesting bark at the back of her throat and before she can get it out he hushes her and snags her sweater from where it hangs beside the door. Better to bring her than not, if only so that her whining won’t wake Grayson and worry him for her being left behind while Jason’s gone. It’s easier than admitting he doesn’t want to go alone after the past few years of being accompanied. Dog remains at his heel the entire way. He could have taken the bike but there’s something sort of otherworldly about this time of night and morning, the in between hours when even Gotham sleeps save for the rattle of empty subway cars and the occasional flash of passing headlights. It’s still more alive than some small darkened suburb but the ways he walks when he’s in the city proper he crosses the path of almost no one. Those he does see note the purpose in his step and move to the side, one woman even clutching her bag and retreating across the street with a wary look to the pup behind him as if she anticipated some hound of hell rather than a mutt in her pink and snowflake Christmas best.

No one says a word on the subway. There’s no one to care.

In the Gotham Cemetery the world is dark and light all at once and the silence is absolute save for the crunch of frozen tough grass under his boots and four trotting paws. In here there are no passers by to look at him sideways in fear of the faint light of the Pit in his eyes. There’s no voices hushed on phones trying to keep themselves safe on the long walk home too late at night. In here, the world is untenanted and he is the last man cursed to walk. The sensation is only amplified by every stone he passes until he finds the one that bears his mother’s name.

Not Sheila. Never. Whatever excuses she made for not being there she could have been, and what little hope and optimism he had for her was lost the day he died. In his adulthood he could forgive her but she was not his mother in anything more than genetics. Catherine, though. Regardless of what else she may have been she was still the one who raised him and for all that he could have almost have called her good. On the days he lingered here, he wondered dimly what might have been if she had found something outside of herself and been able to pull out of the sucking need that poisoned her to the end. He tried to think of good times, of moments when things seemed lighter, but his memory before his resurrection was shaky at best. There were a number of theories and proposals that what happened to him in the Pit altered the core of who he was and in the moments where everything was hot fury and spite he could believe it. In the early days with Dick he called himself Monster.

He didn’t feel much like a monster now. He felt almost close to what he had been as he curled his legs up and settled onto the frozen earth. Dog wound around his back as he laid his burden across the stone. Subway station roses, already half withered, a handful of daisies woven into the bouquet.

In this moment he was twelve again, fingers clutched into fur, waiting to understand what could possibly come next for someone like him. Everyone saw him as fury and storm and fire and all they knew of him was guns. Yes, he was angry. He still is angry, and he will be angry, but he knows how to be other things if people will just let him. Alfred understood that. Dick does too. They see the methods, the steps that carry him three moves ahead in patterns that are incomprehensible for his lack of transparency, all in service of doing. Not doing good, or bad, just doing. They know, and knew, that he’s not bad or good. He just is. He is what he is and that doesn’t change.

But things around him have changed and more than anyone he knows it’s lethal to remain stagnant. Still there’s comfort in tradition and habit. So he sits for a while and daydreams and posits just what Catherine might have thought of the man he’s become.

Could she even care?

It’s different now without Alfred. It’s harder to believe she would. If she wouldn’t just gaze vacantly past him with the glaze of high.

Jason leaves her behind and at home he sleeps on the couch with his head cradled in his arms. When he wakes tangled in a blanket he carries it to the kitchen and wraps Dick up in it with him until he doesn’t ache anymore.

The following days pass in patterns. Sleep. Wake. Work, patrol, plan, categorize, reload, repeat.

Work. Patrol. Plan. Threaten. Bribe. Clean. Reload. Repeat.

He’s forgotten all about the letter by the time the tree is standing and the lights are wound through the banister and it might have remained that way had Dick not proposed the question he did. In that moment he was flush and taut, a string wound too tight, but not for the reasons that others might have projected onto him. In truth he was scared because in the deeper parts of himself he believed what he said; he wasn’t wanted, and if he showed his face he would be turned away without Alfred there to buffer for him. It wasn’t about any bitterness or loathing for Bruce.  _ That _ was what would hurt the most. When inevitably he arrived on the steps of Wayne Manor and they shut in his face.

It is this thought that dogs his steps as he plunges down the fire escape and hits the street, the image reeling back and playing in his brain as he straddles his bike and kicks it into gear. The cold stings at his knuckles and he sees the door shut again and again and again.

_ Hey Bruce. Merry Christmas. _

_ Hey Bruce. _

_ Hey. _

He’s in the shopping district before he knows it, autopilot guiding him to a store that had caught his eye last week when Dick had tugged him along in their endeavors to build Christmas. With his mask and gear secreted in the space under the seat of his bike he’s only a little conspicuous as he stands before the display with his hands buried in his pockets and his gaze fixed on a number of glittering watches. New. Studded with stones, gaudy things with price tags that made his skin crawl. For a birthday some years ago he’d fixed Thomas Wayne’s watch. He’d started when he was young, still a freshly caped Robin, and managed to dig it up again once everything had cooled down after Black Mask.

Now watching the second hands tick by he realizes something.

He misses Bruce.

This wasn’t a foreign concept by any stretch of the imagination; one of his fondest (if faded) memories was a simple one from his time as Robin. Movies. Popcorn. For just a little while being nothing more than a kid with a dad. There were fleeting breaths of cool air where they could almost be that sometimes, regardless of what his path in life had been. Bruce had been the one who had told him about Roy. Had been there. There were snapshot scenes and his shoulders sank with the weight of them. Snapshots weren’t a relationship. They were fragments. Fragments didn’t encompass a whole and he was equally fractured. 

How fucked up was it that the only times they could stand each other was when someone died and just barely even then?

Alfred’s funeral had been such a fucking farce.

So maybe there was something here. A reason. If the door slammed in his face he could know it was shut forever, not to Red Hood but to him, and he could hold his middle fingers up and watch that bridge burn from its frayed ropes. The bigger ‘If’ was even more terrifying than that now. He had thought ‘worse’ would be him being shut out but no. Worse would be being invited in.

He knew how to be unwanted.

How could you erase the slate and start over when history was carved into the stone and soaked in your own blood?

The way Jason figured things, he could probably start with making that first step. What was it he had been told?

_ It’s not a commitment, _ the voice in his head whispers.  _ You’re just peeking in the windows. Weighing your options. You’re not agreeing to anything just yet. It’s not signed sealed and dated, it’s just an option. _

So just go with the flow. This isn’t necessarily where he excels; his place is in the long con, but in the short term when things are in the middle of blowing up in his face he can think on the spot, move on the fly. So make the first move.

The watch shop is passed up in favor of moving on and seeing what catches his attention. The simplest answer comes first as he slips into a liquor store and points to a bottle in a gleaming glass case. Double digits, not triple, those are too rich for his blood --  _ who would spend that kind of money on something consumable?  _ \-- and he runs hot with the thought of throwing away that much money away just to drink it up or posture for pretty glitter friends, but he sheds it easily as he barely smiles at the clerk and he shies as if he’d been confronted with a dog baring its teeth even as he offers a polite retail ‘Happy Holidays’ and slips the scotch into a green velvet bag. This tucks under Jason’s arm as he moves on.

The cold leaves his cheeks chapped and heated and the second shop laps warmth over his skin. What drew him into this one he doesn’t know. Bruce doesn’t strike him as the type to be into esoterica, but behind the counter are a number of small volumes. One in particular catches his eye. Leather. Gold lettering.  _ ‘Ex Altiora’ _ . It’ll do. A few extra dollars entices the clerk to wrap it for him and she watches his lips as he talks, chattering airily something about how he should stay a while, try out the couch, this really is the place to come and relax and be oneself. How she understands that sometimes this is the only place where people can feel free to be themselves and talk about Magic and Witchcraft, and he can hear the capital letters as she speaks.

He’s not sure what she sees in him. For a moment he’s almost tempted but there’s a difference, he knows, between the Magic she knows and the kind that fills his blood to brimming. She’s so earnest and kind he imagines for a moment taking a seat on that couch and letting her set a cup of horrible herbal whatever-the-fuck tea in his hands and telling her everything, and then the book is wrapped and she reads his total and the spell is broken. He thanks her.

He means it.

  
  


Five days to the Eve and the book and the bottle remain on the kitchen island. Neither he nor Dick acknowledge the existence of the gifts even though they both know what they mean. Life goes on as normal and the only thing that changes is the thrumming under his skin that seems to increase as time goes by, that electric buzzing of anticipation that makes it hard to sleep at night.

Two days to the Eve and he wakes up with hands cupping his cheeks and his throat raw from screaming. Sleepy eyes gleam in the half moonlight of the dark and fingers run through his hair and he embraces the slender frame in his bed and cries. It has nothing to do with the coming holiday, not really, but the stress seeps into every channel of his consciousness and makes it hard to dream. At least this time that was all it was. Jason banishes himself to the couch despite Grayson’s protests and wakes up with soft black tresses slid between his fingers and Dog curled up on the rug in the circle the prone figure forms. He carries them both back to bed and this time when he lays alongside he falls deep enough not to wake until morning.

One day left. Dick gives him a custom teddy bear. One of those types you stuff on your own, with a little leather jacket. He insists that Jay smell it, and the reason is readily apparent when there’s something warm and sugary to it. Dick doesn’t quite remember what the scent is supposed to be but there’s something to it that lets his muscles unwind and maybe once or twice he catches a surreptitious whiff despite the stiffness of his jaw and vague posturing of ‘too old for this shit’. They both know better. Jason is far more practical, and it’s with no small amount of shame that he presents his gift, definitely not worth the enthusiasm with he’s greeted with. Do people still do romance coupons these days? Jason does. Apparently it works out.

Christmas Eve and he can’t sleep. There’s just one more day and they have to make their appearances, play good sons, pretend everything is the same even when all the furniture’s been moved one inch to the left and there’s no crisply ironed butler to smile and tell them they’re being far too rowdy in not so many words. Jason Todd doesn’t stare up at the ceiling. He pulls on his clothes and works out his nervous energy on the streets of Gotham. One more body on the pavement, one less to worry about tomorrow, and if he’s sore and exhausted then he can’t care anymore. When he sleeps it’s with one arm draped over the jutting of stone and his muscles screaming for mercy.

_ Only kid in Gotham I know with a favorite gargoyle. _

Jason’s never been one for the suit and tie, but he wears it anyway, leather jacket folded over his arm from the frigid ride over from the Blüdhaven border. A familiar hand squeezes his and he stands there uselessly when Dick doesn’t knock but opens the door like he’s welcoming himself home. In more than a few respects he is. Damian might be the heir apparent but nothing will ever marr the legacy of the First Robin. And who could say no to Grayson? Even when he brings persona non grata numero uno.

When the door shuts he’s within its confines and he has to wonder if that’s a good thing.

“Hey Bruce.”


	4. Chapter 4

True to form not all of Alfred’s list is fulfilled. The topiaries are trimmed, the grounds kept, and of note Bruce strikes out on his own to locate someone to string up lights among the greenery. Alfred, of course, was not the only member of his staff and therefore the manor is otherwise well-kept but there are still places where his absence is hard to disregard. In a manner of speaking, he’s used to delegating his life as Bruce Wayne to other people. There are places where his presence is more absolutely required and decisions he alone should (and does) make, but for the most part it’s difficult to reconcile his life as Batman and the one he holds as Bruce Wayne. Alfred helped bridge the divide. Now it seems as if the latter portion is beginning to slip from his fingers. It’s strange doing things so grounded and mundane as selecting Christmas cards from the store, and by the look on the face of the cashier it appears just as bizarre, but he does them and feels a sort of peace settle.

If the focus is on things being relatively normal then perhaps this is that. Granted his selections are made without ever looking at price tags so he’s hardly a standard shopper by any means but he otherwise feels almost as if he blends in. This is not true, of course. Anyone who says you can’t tell the difference between two plain shirts by the price tag hasn’t seen an expensive shirt tailored perfectly to their frame beside a pick from the local superstore, and they certainly haven’t seen Bruce Wayne try and mesh with a crowd. He does his best but soon he finds himself something like funneled towards the upper class districts anyway, where the way he carries himself and the weight of the watch on his wrist are much less obtrusive distractions. It’s here that he brings out one of the little black books. A fresh one, one of at least six that match exactly like it and sit on the shelf in the manor next to far more loosened and worn bindings. Tim, Stephanie, Dick, Damian, Barbara...they’re all easy. They did him the dignity of laying out almost exactly what they wanted and even then he knows them just about well enough to think on the fly if he tries. Some items are already checked. One thing he won’t contest is that purchasing online is easier and he’d run through at least half the list just tapping on his phone through a meeting, flashing a sly smile to the accountant he was sat beside and receiving a muted laugh from her in turn.

Not his sense of humor, but he had ordered the ‘I’m Shy But At Least I Have A Big Dick’ hoodie anyway.

It threw into stark relief just how empty his buzzing head was whenever he thought of Jason. Despite the lack of response, Dick had marked himself as bringing a guest and even if it turned out that Jason didn’t come along anyway it seemed to defeat the purpose of the whole affair that he’d be left out. Some effort had been put into going through Alfred’s archives but the gifts seemed...random. Uncertain. As if he didn’t have any better idea of what the second of the Wayne wards wanted than anyone else. Going through all of his own records did little to help either as what he largely noted down were the toys that Red Hood kept in his arsenal and who he trafficked with. His notes on Jason himself were spare, typically related to work, though the oldest ones contained a little more. Favorite foods. The one time he’d had to replace a favorite t-shirt. The guitar he hadn’t asked for for his birthday, but he’d figured out to locate for him when he caught the boy dawdling after school more than once. Little details. Things that didn’t take a detective’s hand, but a father’s.

Yet his files of the others somehow seemed more extensive. Showed more care. Didn’t they? In truth he could blame at least a little on circumstance. Jason had died young and people changed drastically even aging as they normally did; Dick at nineteen barely resembled Dick at fifteen and he had time to grow up. The same could not be said for the second Robin. There were certainly a few years where he was hardly cognizant of himself. A few more spent training, honing himself under Talia’s tutelage. The Jason that returned under the Red Hood was not the same that he had pulled from the rubble and that was more than just age, that was a different sort of experience and a life path that, now that he considers it? One that hardly left time to just  _ be a person _ in his own right. Maybe he should have done more.

At least he was trying now. The first step of turning the page over for clean white promise was bridging the gap. He’d reached out and hadn’t even received Jason’s declining notice. There was nothing to go off of but what Batman saw of value, what a boy of fourteen cared about, and the notes of a butler who had been more family to his children than he was. Asking Dick was the best shot he had at bringing himself up to speed outside of interrogating friends or digging deeper, and both of those options would only invite animosity. Trying to invite Jason out himself would be fruitless. Had been, his offering of a lunch out declined with an icy ‘what do you need to know’ delivered after, to which he hadn’t replied.

_ ‘Okay.’ _ Followed precisely twenty-seven hours later. The two messages from Jason in succession hung in his phone like a monument to failure.

Two steps back and no steps forward to show for it.

He did eventually decide on something, at least. Not the most extravagant present but something roughly the same price as what he’d gotten the others, along with a gift card to what he once remembered as a favorite restaurant to put in the stocking in addition to the other more general treats that had been noted as typical filler. The best he could hope for was that it communicated what he intended it to. That despite their presently strained relations, he still loved and accepted Jason for who he was, so far as he understood him to be now. At worst he expected to be frowned at and curtly thanked, or even scoffed at.

Either might have hurt less than how it was actually received.

The gift exchanging came at the end of the evening after all was said and done and up until that point Bruce could even had said it was going well. In lieu of cooking he had ordered catering of a sort; not in the manner that he had the poor staff working on Christmas but rather in the sense that the food had been delivered the Monday prior in easy to heat pans and stored in pantry and fridge until the day of. The tree was set up by the persons he ordered to deliver it, decorations attended to by Tim, Cass, and Damian (the last of which who was promptly banished when his command became more irritant than assist). Throughout the week nearly all of their number came and went, a dozen different hands and more attending a task that had once been manned by a single figure and a much smaller number of assistants.

It did not escape his notice how they often appeared startled when he opened the door.

It didn’t occur to him how many times he hesitated in wait of someone else doing so.

On the night of, they gathered piecemeal and surprisingly enough Grayson and Todd were not the last to arrive (that honor went to Barbara, who had spent the earlier half of the day with her father). In fact they seemed surprisingly eager to help after the initial awkwardness of first greetings. Dick bore no hesitation in flinging arms around him, the gesture returned in a tight and ponderous squeeze. Jason hovered and then decided it wasn’t worth it, apparently, because by the time Bruce broke loose he was already moving to drape his coat on a hook and making his greetings to the others. They seemed equally intrigued that he had come but one look at Dick in the warmth of his lumpy blue Christmas sweater all beaming smiles and wind-whipped red cheeks told them well enough who or what had encouraged it.

It wasn’t what he wanted but Rome wasn’t built in a day and a relationship couldn’t start from scratch in a night. He had come, they were perfectly cordial, and both boys were quick to step in and lend a hand getting food in the oven and on the table and otherwise helping with small things.

Jason spiking the eggnog for the older crowd could technically be considered ‘helping’.

Dick keeping the conversation moving, flowing through anything and everything but the elephants and birds in the room, was a godsend more than a help.

Cass’ silent contribution culminated in a louder event, shoulders crammed together and fingers streaked in sugar, condensed milk poured over cornflakes and bats and snowflakes iced still hot so that the colors ran together.

For a few hours it felt like the puzzle pieces fell into place. He was no closer to the prodigal bird than before but in the lingering hours before they even considered breaking their evening for what they knew would come (patrol never rested, did it?) the manor felt whole and home. It felt strange. Pleasant, surrounded as he was by his family, but the past few weeks had brought out so sharply the sensation that in all these years he had never been so involved as he was now and he was ready to kick himself for having missed out on all of this. Almost, anyway. Some part of his being yearned to retreat and let them do this as they’d like, only rejoining them when he absolutely must, but so too did Bruce understand that he had the rest of the year to seek solitude.

“What the fuck.”

Anger in a familiar voice struck a discordant note in the comfortable cozy haze of the evening and a murmured soothing ‘Jay—‘ flowed after it. Polite manners and decorum suggested that Bruce’s worst case scenario was what would have played out in this moment if it had been anyone other than one Jason Todd. The sardonic laugh that chases it suggests the struggle that churns behind the singular statement. The quiet murmur and laughter that had filled the spacious room died and eyes turned. Some startled. Others unsurprised. At least two pairs, concerned.

In one tightly curled hand Jason clutched a box of hollowpoints, garish gold ribbon still spilled over his hand. “This is what you think?” The high flush in his cheek could have been attributed to a little of the liquor but something wavering crept into his tone to say otherwise. “You could have done _ nothing _ . Don’t—“ Dick had reached out to touch his shoulder and Bruce watched him flinch away as he stood and crossed the room in three firm strides. “—it’s fine. I’m going. Not my scene.” The box falls into Bruce’s lap in the clatter of shells against each other and he doesn’t even wince despite the weight of them. They’re nowhere near as heavy as what suddenly hangs in his chest. A second box falls, silver paper hitting his thigh in a quiet slap. Just from the sound of it the contents are apparent. Jason’s gaze bores into his own and when he puzzles it out, it’s not anger he sees.

“Dick?” No answer. Jason doesn’t break his gaze to look. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

Not a word of protest. No one moves until the sound of the engine outside snarls to life, and in that moment legs unfold and the gathered family splinters again in the flow of Cass away and Dick turning to start collecting paper, shoving it into the bag that Tim retrieves without being asked, a cookie balanced in his off hand.

“Really Father I don’t know what you expected—“ is the first sentence to break the quiet and after that it’s a maelstrom.

“He’s not a  _ monster _ , if you stopped treating him—“

“—honestly he’s pretty cool if you get past—“

“—could at least have held off—“

“—if  _ Bruce _ hadn’t—“

“—still an asshole—“

“Enough.” Bruce’s voice cuts through that of his children and they all fall silent to quick attention. “It’s my fault. I’ll handle it. Damian, help the others clean up. Dick?”

The eldest Robin’s shoulders relax and he doesn’t have to be told where to go, already emptying his arms to move onward to Bruce’s study. When the door shuts behind him he regards the relaxed slant of Grayson’s posture and folded arms and reads the tightened muscle in his jaw to contrast it. True to form he is not the first to fill the leaden air with words.

“You know, when I said it was up to you to do it on your own, I really expected you to put some thought into it.”

“I did.”

“Did you?”

“I don’t approve of his methods but I still—“

“Jesus, Bruce.” A hand tugged through the loose dark curls, palm pressing to his temple. “Tone deaf. Who gives a shit about his methods?”

The lapels of his suit jacket flicked back for his hands to hide in his pockets. “Precisely the point.”

“How is that the point?”

“In spite of our differences I still wanted him here.”

Bruce frowned at the laugh that followed. “You basically—in front of everyone. You might as well just told him that the only thing you know about him is how much you hate Red Hood.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well  _ that’s what you said. _ ”

The idea is in his head now and when he turns it over he can see it, see how it’s taken as insult. A snub rather than an olive branch.  _ ‘World’s Greatest Detective—‘ _

“—and you can’t see how that might be a fuck you?”

Bruce slides the pad of his thumb over the rim of his pocket and says nothing, only fixes his gaze on the photographs that line one wall at regular intervals save for a single broader gap.

“So what now.”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope ‘fixing it’ is at least top ten.”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re really not good at this.” He meets Dick’s wry smile with one of his own.

“No.”

“Look.” Finally the lean figure shifts off his desk with a lightly sprung step. “He doesn’t even have to like it.” The perk of Bruce’s brow posed the question for him, and Dick gesticulated vaguely. “Just do something. Something so that he knows that you actually care even a little bit.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Take him to dinner?”

“He’ll say no.”

“Ugly bat-Christmas sweater then. Tickets to a crappy movie that you think he might like — no shooting —“ a glance snaps over him and Dick reaches up, squeezing hands into the shoulders of a suit that cost far too much for how little he wears it. “A hand written letter and a plastic spider ring. It doesn’t matter. Just give him a bit to cool off and then  _ try _ . Actually try. Not ‘Your alter ego is a criminal and I tolerate you’.”

_ Not that, but ‘you’re my son and I love you’.  _ Dick doesn’t have to tell him. He already knows. The door might be shut right now but there’s nothing saying he can’t try opening it again.

“You can stay here for the night.”

“I know.”

For once Dick doesn’t hug him before he goes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author finally gets it together enough to update

It’s nearly two hours before Jason stops the bike and it’s only because he needs to fuel it. Standing there in the dim pale light of a quiet station, he stares vacantly through the glass with gloved fingers clenched around the pump and the tingling sting of the wind abating at his collar and in his ears. With time between himself and the incident it feels almost ridiculous. Maybe he had overreacted, but thinking about it again brought heat through his blood that chased away the cold. He checks his texts and there’s a concerned one from Dick, a slightly less concerned (but kind) one from Tim, and nothing else. The first is the one he answers and says he needs time to clear his head and it might be a couple days. The response is immediate and urges him to come home instead. He knows that it’s not necessarily meant to bring him home immediately but acknowledgement that he’s in his own head and despite how he feels, he has a home to go to. One where he’s welcome and safe. 

Jason takes the days anyway.

It’s two days before he shows up in the warehouse on the cusp of Blüdhaven and Gotham that they call home to find their tree still up and Dog eagerly awaiting him at the door. She’s a smart thing and doesn’t make a sound nor jump upon him until he drops to a knee, wrapping cold leather-clad arms around the happily squirming ball of fur as she noses in to lap at the beginnings of more than stubble but not quite a beard. They have other ways of knowing anyway. Dick’s out, but only a few short minutes after he’s walked through the door, his phone buzzes with a text.

_ Welcome home, Jaybird. Meet me for dinner? _

It’s early in the afternoon and he’s not invited for lunch, a tiny touch that makes him smile. His absence and radio silence unacknowledged, his homecoming a quiet affair that he can set when and where he feels comfortable. The return text agrees. A nap is in order, a shower and a shave, and then...sure. Dinner. Someplace greasy and crappy. Sorry Dickie; you’ll have to figure out something healthy on your own. If he does. Not everything has to be Instagrammable but damn if Richard Grayson couldn’t make anything look good.

He does, of course. At the diner Jason’s phone lights up between them with an Instagram notification labeled ‘cheat day!’ with a series of joyful and sparkling emojis but he’s too preoccupied with enjoying the real thing for now. It might not seem so obvious to others. There’s no arm around shoulders or stolen kisses in between bites from one of four different plates, but under the table their legs touch at the knee and slowly press together until anchored there.

“How was your trip?” Dick had gone all in at the start but slows down once half his burger disappears and seems utterly oblivious to the mayonnaise smudged on his chin. A fry drags through ketchup and disappears into his mouth as Jason watches, considering whether to tell him about the stain. He lets it go for his own quiet amusement and presses the edge of his fork through his French toast, scooping up a glob of strawberry cream cheese that spilled from the stuffing.

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Well I thought you’d like it more than meltdown. Temporary disruption of service?”

“It was fine.” They eat in silence for a little while longer. Jason speaks up again first. “I went up to the mountains.”

“Oh?”

Not too terribly far. Just by the water gap, where the Appalachian Trail invited hikers down to waiting respite. It was at a small bed and breakfast that he had stopped while he considered riding further. There was a whole country out there that he could go to, but laying on a bed in a room that smelled like cedar, he realized that wasn’t how it was going to be. Sure the incident was upsetting but laying there in the dark with the quiet of being far out into the woods smothering onto his eardrums, he realized that maybe he had overreacted after all.

“Well that’s good,” Dick chimes in quietly.

At least as far as charging off. Ditching the party was perfectly reasonable.

“You know he didn’t mean it like that.”

Jason shrugs and loads his fork with eggs before impaling a sausage.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

Out there he realized he felt relatively uncomfortable. As quiet as the city ever became, it was never as all-encompassing as this. It made it hard to sleep and when he woke up he couldn’t recall when he had knocked out, but the scent of fried eggs and bacon drew him down the stairs to a smiling couple and a few other bedraggled patrons.

“You know we’re invited to New Years too.”

“Pass.”

“Fair, I guess. Could just make it a Robin thing.”

“Also pass.”

“Alright.”

Sitting there he could almost imagine the others. Tim. Steph. Cass. Even Bruce, in a way. A motley crew clustered around a laden table, jostling each other for dominance rather than the polite and quiet requests posted by these strangers. He had tried to shake it off, walk the streets and even a little of the trails, but he found himself wanting for verticality and concrete.

And this, his hand slipping under the table to curl into Dick’s fingers even as he shovels down more of his sprawling breakfast with his other hand. The distance had cleared his head a little, and maybe it was codependent, but Dick always had more sense at the end of the day and while he could drive all the way to Portland he’d be doing it without help. Help that, for once, he wanted.

It’s two weeks past Christmas when the box arrives. Dick apologizes distractedly from where he dangles high up, hooked at the knees and stretching his arms straight. He already tore a corner of the black paper before he noticed the tag attached to the ribbon. Jason has to wonder if it was intentional to coax him into opening it the rest of the way, because he knows by one look who it’s from. His name written in a neat hand graces a plain white card. No other text. No mailing label, which means it was delivered by hand. Maybe Dick had brought it home after his latest visit, but it would surprise Jason little if the offender himself had brought it and left it on their stoop as a little nod to the fact that he damn well knows where they make their roost.

It sits there another two days and finally when he spills coffee with a curse, the liquid pools under the square and he considers just tossing the whole damn thing. Instead rough fingers draw the silk of the ribbon and tear away dripping, wrinkled paper to let it flutter down atop discarded banana peels and protein shake containers.

Inside is a box. A box with a plain white cardboard lid, the kind you get from a department store when you get your purchases gift wrapped. He lifts and shakes it loose, brushing aside tissue paper to reveal soft wool. Cashmere, probably, considering its sender. When it lifts from the box the ugly-not-ugly Christmas-y pattern reveals itself in pale blue and red bats and robins and little snowflakes, the cuffs and v-neck collar graced with ornate patterns. It’s not his style and yet it is all at once. A single sheaf of paper flutters to the floor and at the bottom of the box sits a far more practical leg pouch.

Asshole.

It’s perfect.

The page says only three things.

_ I’m sorry. _

_ Dinner? _

_ Love, _

_ Bruce _

“Dick?” The sweater haphazardly tugs on and he pulls here and there to get it to lay flat over his tee before snatching up his keys and calling up the stairs.

“Yes?” Muffled. Echoey. The sound of running water.

“Catch you on patrol later.”

A pause. “Alright Little Wing. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Jason snorts, not loud enough to hear over the shower, and steps out into the cold.


	6. Chapter 6

Bruce wasn’t sure what he expected when he dropped the box at their doorstep. He hadn’t been disappointed. Not by the silence. Not by the lack of acknowledgement when Red Hood’s activity picked up on the streets again. Not by the sudden appearance of Jason Todd on his doorstep. This was surprising at a minimum. Concerning at most, if only because they’d last parted on bad terms and it seemed that every time they met without a buffer it always came to blows. That probably said more than anything. Actions louder than words and all.

He’d actually had an eye on the cameras when the alert sounded and he watched with no small amount of amusement as Jason leaned his bike on its kickstand to haul himself over the gates like a common thief, almost lumbering in his movements compared to the way some of the Robins neatly flicked and vaulted over the fences when they chose to do so. 

Bruce nearly laughed at the dirty look given to the camera when he pressed the button that sent the gates slowly creaking open. By the time the motorcycle’s engine cut at the foot of the sweeping steps that led up to Wayne Manor, he was already at the door, pulling it open in the sluggish arc of heavy wood. Boots crunched in the beginning drifts of snow, thudding against stone in a weighted pattern that led up to the flat space and the breadth of the porch lay between them. Jason thrust his hands into his pockets.

  
“So where we going?”   
  


Bruce stepped back slowly. So that was what this was about. His offer was actually being taken up. A second surprise this evening, and he reached for his coat to tug it down from the hook and flick it around his shoulders, neatly buttoning the front and stepping out with the door pulled shut behind him.

“Dealer’s choice,” he answered.

“Diner?”   
“Alright.”

“You’re driving.”

“Of course.”

Long strides carried them around the looping driveway and into the garage past long banks of luxurious vehicles he hardly ever sat in, their flanks a bright sheen under the lights that clicked on as they passed. A black number was selected; sleek and sporty, but not so much so that the seats were too tight to fit a fully grown and relatively bulky former Robin. The drive is spent in relative silence outside of polite chatter (“How’s Dick?” “Fine.”), as is most of the meal until the very end. Two slices of blueberry pie and a dish of ice cream to share and finally the voice first raised is his own.

“I’m sorry.”

The sigh that comes from across the table isn’t flippant or annoyed. It’s just tired. Exhausted, even. A soft clink and scrape follows the track of a fork around a plate and into vanilla where it leaves a purpling smear through the melting cream. Jason keeps eating and says nothing, but his eyes are no longer directed out the window at the splash of dirty snow from passing tires. Instead it’s on Bruce’s laced fingers and thumbs pressed together to lightly tap.

“I misstepped. I meant it as a truce. I meant it as...I want you to know that despite everything, you’re still--” He paused, as if waiting for interruption. A small mercy that would be. One he isn’t granted. “--I don’t want our lives to intrude on our relationship and I want you to know that even when there’s friction between us, you’re still my son. As I see it.”

“And?”   
  


That response froze him completely and his head lifted, their eyes meeting across the table. Jason continues, “Why does it matter now? You keep doing this, you fuck up in all the same ways and ‘sorry’ is supposed to fix it?”

“No, it’s not.” Between the two of them forks drop to plates and everything is left half-finished as Bruce leans over the table. “It’s occurred to me that I haven’t been maintaining my connections as well as I should have.”

“World’s Greatest Detective,” scoffed from across the table. “What brought you to that conclusion?”   
  
A book draws from the pocket of his coat and he lays it on the table between them, pushing it over with the tips of two fingers. Jason flips it open angrily and thumbs through it, his expression quickly relaxing and then falling with furrowed brows as he relaxes back and sinks in his seat. He imagines he knows what must be running through his head because it’s probably as much the same as when he’d first cracked open the journals. There’s so much there, years and years of being noticed and cared for and loved and they’d never known the depths of such.

“You meant the world to him. You all did.” Bruce speaks softly as the younger man turns a page and runs his thumb over the words where they stretch the paper in valleys of precisely struck pen. “You mean as much to me. I’m not-” Not that sort of person. Not as expressive. Withdrawn. Very much inside of himself. This time Jason offers him the grace of picking up the empty space.

“I know.”

The fork jabs into his pie and he takes two more bites before muttering something about going home and Bruce obliges. It does not escape his notice that the book disappears into the inner pocket of Jason’s jacket, and he says nothing. It was never his to hold onto in the first place. They rise nearly in unison with a hefty tip left on the table. The ride back is even more silent than the first and Bruce finds himself looking out of the corner of his eye when his attention isn’t required on the road at stoplights. Jason keeps his face firmly turned out of the window and his fingers drift to the inner pocket of his jacket, though once he looks down at his phone and taps out a text. To Dick, assuredly, judging by the very brief moment where the pensiveness smooths out of his expression. When he parks the car he fully expects to be abandoned in the garage but instead there’s a set of boots in lockstep with the tick of his own dress shoes, the sound giving way to the muted crush of snowdrifts beginning to pile higher. Jason matches him all the way to the top of the steps but when he goes to open the door and considers whether he should invite him inside and how, a single word stops him.

“Bruce.”

He turns around and there’s pinched brows and twisted mouth, the faint glow of the Pit in the eyes of a boy who’d come back a man. This time he doesn’t bare his teeth. He just waits. There’s nothing more said. There’s just two quick strides and hands lift to push away the folds of his jacket and wind around underneath, a heavy head tilted to collide with his collar, face disappearing into fabric. It only takes a moment before Bruce responds in kind, squeezing so hard that he shakes.

_ I’m sorry, _ they both say without movement of lips.  _ I miss you. I miss you so much. _

It would be pretty to dream that this would be it. Tabula Rasa. Erasing the slate, scratching out all the years of animosity and being at odds. They could both remember how it had once been, dipping into that favorite memory of movies on a couch like Father and Son without thinking of blows traded in a casino over a projected villainous scheme. He’d see him as a man. As an individual, come to know him in a way that meant he could do things right on the first try, trust his choices. In a perfect world Jason would no longer snap at extended hands and see his gestures for their sincerity.

It’s a pretty dream, but a dream it is.

Standing there with his arms wound around Jason’s shoulders and fingers clutching at his back, the boy’s heartbeat a caged bird fluttering against his chest, he knows nothing will be different. Not on the outside. The outside doesn’t matter. They’re not the kind of people to be father and son; Jason’s too old to start calling him Dad now and Bruce isn’t the kind of man who insists on doing things as a family.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a change. Imperceptible. Silent. It’s the way Jason holds him and turns his face into Bruce’s collar to shield it from the cold that tugs at their clothes. It’s the way he leans into him, choosing him as safe harbor instead of trembling with the tension of muscle ready to spring away at a moment’s notice. Nothing will change because everything already has.

Gradually his cheek comes to rest atop the young man’s head, the pale streak of hair curling against his chin amongst all the black tangles and his palm smooths down the back of the cableknit to rest against the flight of robins circling the middle.

“I love you,” Bruce said, his low burr a thing to be felt rather than heard.

“I know,” said Jason instantly. Reflex to be snappish, but true all the same. This time he knows. For once, he knows, and the doubt that cuts him apart is absent. In the morning it will all seem a haze and the old fears would gnaw at his core but in this moment there is nothing but warmth in his voice. “I love you too.” His grip knots into the back of Bruce’s smooth wool vest and he closes his eyes.

They linger until the snow no longer melts when it touches them and when they part it’s in the slow slide of limbs until they can touch no more, reluctance to let the cold slip in and make it so as if nothing had ever happened. Jason’s hands return to his pockets and Bruce flicks his coat shut in the wrap of his arms around himself.

“You should get home.”

“Yeah.” Keys rattle and are silenced by the close of his fist and he moves down the steps to where his bike waits with the fresh pelt of snow on its seat. As he sweeps it away with the flick of his forearm, the voice behind him rises over the muting cushioning of snowfall.

“Drive safe.”

Jason straddles his ride and snatches his helmet up but before he’s mute in its confines and deafened by the roar of the engine, he smiles broadly up at the figure on the steps and laughs.

“Never.”

Bruce watches him place the shining cherry red helmet over his head and twist gloved hands over the throttle and stands there until the last thread of sound is gone and there’s nothing but the muted brush of a snowy breeze.

Only then does he turn away and finish his return home after a long night, knowing that an even longer one waits still.

On the other side of Gotham, his sons don their suits too.


End file.
